SAS Cables...? @Fritz , I notice in the Ebay listing that there's a pair of SAS cables in one of the pictures. Did yours come with them, and if so can you share how long they were?
@EngChiSTH, many CSE-826 that were originally turnkey servers will have SAS cables that are only long enough to reach connectors on a motherboard with an onboard SAS3 controller (e.g. X10SRH-CF). They won't be long enough reach an add in card. For those situations you wind up needing cables as well.
If it turns out you need cables, the value proposition for a SAS HBA card changes a bit: Depending on use case, you can use spinning HDD with a much less expensive SAS2 card without much (if any) loss of performance. A SAS2 card with appropriate cables is going to cost a lot less than a SAS3 card with cables, especially since used SAS3 cards seem to be crazy expensive right now.
